There was an unearthly quiet on Friday in Langtang, where the remains of as many as 300 people are believed to be buried under 20 feet of rock and ice that sheared off a mountain during the earthquake that hit Nepal two weeks ago.......Gone were most of the international search teams that had been working their way through the debris — the drones, the American Special Forces, the Israeli military. Instead, there was early-morning silence ....... “Families think that maybe some people are hiding somewhere in the jungle; they are telling me this type of thing, but I don’t think there is any possibility to find any life here” .....

International news crews have, for the most part, headed home

. ....... Some aid workers said they were worried that donors’ attention had already strayed from Nepal. An initial request to donor nations by the United Nations for $423 million for the first three months of aid has yielded only $22.4 million so far

The government is the most reliable institution for relief distribution in an integrated fashion, Oli said. ..... Saying that illusion was created by blaming the government, political parties and leaders as infamous and corrupt, Poudel said that they were ready to face such allegations through coordination and unity; and expressed readiness to for power sharing even in the government for the same.

But within days the mood changed. First, Nepali official corridors rumbled with discontent over New Delhi’s unilateral disaster response. But if such heartburn was so far out of public view, a section of the Indian media’s tendentious narrative soured New Delhi’s efforts in the eyes of many ordinary Nepalis. ...... Our media, especially some influential TV stations, chose to extol their hometown heroes. It ignored the tremendous display of dignity and resilience from millions of grief-stricken Nepalis. It ignored the role of Nepali rescue and relief teams, hijacking a disaster response that saw 33 other nations also contributing. ....... To be fair, sensationalism is the lifeblood of commoditised news. Modern day information consumption follows marketplace dynamics. Hence, in theory, retaining eyeballs is necessary for advertisement revenues that could fund genuine journalism. The worry is even when some of India’s influential mainstream media outlets try to do genuine reporting, the end result remains deeply lacking, both in content and form...... In a way, India’s response to the disaster and its media’s oversized, chest-thumping coverage of that effort seemed aimed at a wider strategic goal: To trump China. Comparisons with the Chinese effort were unsubtle and even jingoistic on some occasions. Ironically, in a country where public suspicion of Big Brother India is deep-seated, such egregious news coverage only worsens discontent...... Worldwide, the media is often accused of following templatised coverage of wars, epidemics, natural disasters, accidents and terrorist attacks. Sometimes that can come replete with cultural insensitivities and at the cost of journalistic empathy, propriety, grace and decorum. Just like a section of our media’s reporting of the earthquake in Nepal.

China sent 1088 personnel as of Thursday, May 7. The number is apparently a record in the history of the country since the New China was formed in 1949 ..... eight transport planes, three helicopters and 190 pieces of engineering machinery ..... a total of 546 tonnes of relief materials worth 60 million yuan, approximately USD 9.8 million. ..... 1,600 tents, 10,000 blankets and 327 electric generators while the Red Cross Society of China provided 2,000 tents ...... a 62-member Chinese search and rescue team, along with six dogs, arrived in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu the following day ...... the Chinese medical professionals treated 2,387 victims of the earthquake. ..... The Chinese Foreign Ministry has pledged it will continue to communicate with its Indian counterpart as it seeks to help Nepal.

At the last minute, however, a Nepali Congress (NC) leader from the area, an elected Constituent Assembly (CA) member, Mohan Basnet, held back the distribution. ..... In the presence of the SEBS team, the all-party mechanism in constituency number 1 had already decided to distribute the aid equally among the seven Village Development Committees (VDCs) in the area, but Basnet was furious that he had not been consulted. He started demanding that his constituency should get all the tarpaulins and the sacks of rice. When the SEBS team refused to do that, he resorted to threats, saying outright that he would block the distribution in the area and would go even further and make sure that the team never crossed the border into Sindhupalchok. ....... Almost half of the nation’s more than 7,800 deaths occurred in Sindhupalchok alone. And 95 percent of over 66,000 houses in the district have been completely or partially destroyed. Those who survived are clamouring for shelter and food and a little bit of decency from their leaders. But it took the politicians in Sindhupalchok’s constituency number 3 more than a week to form an all-party group that would be in charge of aid distribution. And even though they profess to work together and be fair in distribution, one can overhear biases in their discussions. ....... While the local leaders were waiting for the consignment from SEBS to arrive on Tuesday, they discussed how the relief material donated by another organisation the other day had been siphoned off to Sikharpur VDC alone. The man behind this move, a local NC cadre, Ganesh Dahal, tried to justify his act by saying that the package contained not more than a few tarpaulin sheets and a few kilos of worthless beaten rice. ...... What Dahal did, however, was what every politician wanted to do and would do if given the chance—take credit for looking after their party’s vote bank in these tough times. ...... Later, a CPN-UML local politician pulled aside the leader of the SEBS team, Rabindra Maharjan, who was assigned to deliver the goods, and asked him to tell the people that the consignment was possible only because of Sher Bahadur. ..... Politicking continues at the VDC level as well. When a group of local politicians from Dubachaur VDC, along with its VDC secretary, arrived on Wednesday to load a truck with tarps and sacks of rice donated by SEBS, a CPN-UML local leader could be heard telling another that they would distribute the aid only to a select few wards. “Why distribute the aid to wards 6 and 7?” said Dipendra Shrestha. “We will take all the relief material to ward numbers 2 and 3.” ........ Major Prem Hamal, who is in the district, recounted how a truck full of aid had to return to the army base the other day after the relief workers could not deal with the angry mob of locals. The only way to satisfy the victims, it seems, is by facilitating relief work through local politicians. ....... “This is as far as we can get,” said Maharjan, after watching the local-level all-party groups load the relief material.

“We keep reminding the politicians to let go of politics for a while, but it’s up to them to take heed or not. If they work together, people will thank them for it; if not, their heads will roll.”

......... Relief work will soon move on to the rebuilding phase, and unless the politicians work together, rehabilitation will be impossible. Tents and tarps are not permanent solutions.